


half awake in a fake empire

by suricatta



Category: British Comedy RPF, Just Puddings (Web Series), Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster (Podcast)
Genre: Distance, Food, M/M, Masturbation, Pining, Repression, Shame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 14:25:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18662191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suricatta/pseuds/suricatta
Summary: James has realisations while on tour in North America.





	half awake in a fake empire

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [wreathed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed) for the wonderfully thorough beta, and both her and [emef](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emef/pseuds/emef) for the encouragement early on in writing this. <3
> 
> The title is a lyric from Fake Empire by The National.

The moment James steps off the plane on his arrival in the United States, he immediately feels a sense of unease. It’s unusual for him to feel like that after a flight; normally when he arrives somewhere after travelling for a very long time he’s just relieved to have made it there in one piece, and that overrides everything else he could possibly feel. This time is different, though, and he doesn’t know why. He feels exhausted, but he also feels restless, and that makes him feel deeply discomfited.

He tries to ignore it, filling his brain with the mundane, boring practicalities of what he has to do and where he has to go before he gets to sit down somewhere and eat something that hasn’t arrived in front of him covered in transparent film. 

—

By the time he’s picked up his bags and got in a taxi to his hotel, James’s phone has finally adjusted to its new geographical location. He flicks through the notifications idly, before alighting on the WhatsApp thread between him and Ed. Ed has spent a significant amount of the past 11 hours that James was in the air sending him about twenty different websites for various dessert places for each city he’s visiting. James feels weirdly touched, even though this is commonplace behaviour for Ed whenever James is travelling somewhere without him; it’s probably just that this time he doesn’t feel that great about being away.

James ignores the fact that thinking about how much food he’s going to be able to talk to Ed about when he gets back instantly wipes away the majority of his qualms about being away for so long.

—

It ebbs and flows, how much James finds himself considering his relationship with Ed. He doesn’t always necessarily know what triggers it, but this time he knows exactly why he’s obsessing. The last time James saw Ed, it was a couple of days before James was flying to the US. They had been recording for the podcast together, and after Ben had left, Ed had hung around a bit longer than he normally did. When Ed said goodbye, he had hugged James, and it occurred to James that it was maybe a bit longer and closer than usual.

It was all just really very earnest, and James had responded very automatically and probably a little too distantly, and that had been that.

But then the thought occurred to James that, yeah, he really _was_ going to miss Ed, and wasn’t that a bit weird, and what even was it about Ed, anyway? Why did James even like him so much that the thought of being away from him was unsettling? They’re just friends. It shouldn’t be that big a deal.

After that first instance, the concept of missing Ed just kind of kept coming back to his thoughts, like a fruit fly to a buffet table. James would always bat it away, but it’d keep returning, landing on a different aspect of the issue each time.

It’s crossed James’s mind before that Ed has some mysterious power over him that no one else in his life, past or present, has ever held. Almost like Ed grounds him somehow; like James is a bunch of helium balloons, and Ed is one of those shiny weights that stops them floating off. 

He doesn’t know whether Ed makes anyone else they know feel like this, or whether it’s just him and he’s weird. (It wouldn’t be the first time.) It’s not like he could ask his friends; he can roughly imagine how that would go with most of them, so he wouldn’t need to have any kind of actual discussion with them anyway.

(‘Nish,’ he’d say, during the interval of a gig where they were both on the bill. ‘Nish, do you ever feel like Ed has a kind of grounding influence on you?’

‘What?’, Nish would respond, in that incredulous manner that indicates Nish has scented a bit in the making, and James would try and brush it off, and Nish would keep on like a shark that’s scented blood and — no, really not worth it.)

(‘Lou, do you feel like Ed grounds you?’ James would ask, apropos of nothing, when they were at some kind of industry party together. He would’ve had to have had a couple of drinks because that is the exact level of intoxicated James would have to be to feel like he’d get a reasonable answer from Lou. 

‘Ooh, no, but I wish he would,’ Lou would invariably answer, even though James would have ran the phrasing of the question in his head several times before asking it to make sure there were no innuendos Lou could spring upon, and James would be left with a deep sense of regret as well as a nagging curiosity about what grounding could possibly mean in a sexual context.)

(‘Do you think it’s normal to feel like you’re grounded when you’re around Ed?’ James would text Josie after a night spent tossing and turning, and Josie… Josie would text him back three days later with the most honest, heartfelt reply out of anyone he knows, which is why James can’t even bring himself to imagine what she’d say.)

Even if James did work out whether how he felt in Ed’s presence was par for the course amongst their social circle, or at least whether it was acceptable, or understandable maybe, he doesn’t know what that knowledge would bring him. Probably just more questions, truth be told. What would it even _mean_? If everyone else agreed that Ed was just a solid kind of guy, reliable, and as such it was entirely reasonable that James would feel calmed by him, what would James constantly seeking his presence out signify, and if it was just him that felt like that around Ed, then obviously that would mean something else entirely. 

James thinks it’s ridiculous that he’s thousands of miles away and yet still dwelling on this issue that’s completely irrelevant under what may as well be a different sun for the feeling of it on the back of his neck. He endeavours to throw himself into work as much as possible so that maybe the fly will get bored and move onto some other element of his psyche, hopefully one that’s more conducive to writing jokes.

—

A couple of days after he arrives, James goes for lunch with Aisling. They’re in an extremely obnoxious kind of hipster vegan cafe, which she’s almost certainly chosen solely to get a rise out of him, but at least, thankfully, it isn’t the gratitude place. Still, he’s on edge. And sure, he’s often at his best when he’s slightly out of his comfort zone, but when Aisling asks him about Ed he visibly startles.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Come on, James. Ed Gamble. You know. Diabetes, great bone structure, one of your best friends?’

‘Yeah, but what about him?’

‘I was just asking how he’s doing! On account of the whole ‘him being my friend too’ thing.’

‘Oh. Yeah. Er, well, he’s done a marathon. You probably know that, though. He talked about it enough.’ James pauses. ‘He’s still diabetic.’ Aisling, having just taken a sip of her drink, splutters slightly.

‘Unsurprising, that. It doesn’t tend to just go away.’

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘Is everything okay between you two?’ Aisling asks, and James instantly regrets making her suspicious, because Aisling is very much not known for her ability to let things drop. ‘You seem kind of… cagey, about him.’

‘Oh, yeah, we’re peachy,’ James says, with as much of a breeze as he can muster. ‘Peachy keen, jelly bean.’ He worries he’s sounding forced, but Aisling smiles, so maybe it’s fine.

Maybe he’s fine.

—

A few days into his trip, James starts having these dreams. He’ll be in a carshare with other comedians on his way to a gig in some interchangeable English town, which he hasn’t had to do in years in reality. He’s always in the front passenger seat, and Ed’s always driving, which he doesn’t remember being the case too often when they’d ended up in cars together before. He never knows who’s in the back of the car. It doesn’t seem to matter.

Come to think of it, James never actually sees Ed’s face in the dreams, either; there’s just this strong, steady sense of his presence next to him as James watches the fields of arable land and grazing animals from the window.

The drive is always uneventful. The only remarkable thing is that James is devoid of any sense of panic in the dream. He periodically checks his watch, or the clock on the dashboard, but without any sense of urgency.

On waking, James is flooded with the kind of homesickness which weighs his heart down all day.

—

New York feels like absence since the blizzard. It was an incredibly frustrating experience to live through, but the sense of camaraderie he felt throughout was one of the times in his life he’s felt most contented with a social situation. He’s walking the same streets he did then, just alone. He’s glad that he definitely knows where he’s going to sleep tonight, that’s a welcome change from last time, but maybe there’s a part of him that would swap that for the company.

He sends Ed a photograph of the listings poster outside the venue where Ed took him. Ed immediately sends a reply saying that James has to cancel everything he’s doing and go and see a band whose name, James suspects, refers to a paraphilia of questionable legality. Apparently they’re some kind of supergroup who are known for being amazing live, and Ed details several crimes he would commit to see them perform. James leans against the wall, watching Ed’s excited messages come in with a smile. After a couple of minutes of Ed typing in caps lock the names of people who James knows to be significant in the metal world from previous conversations with him, James taps out a reply.

_Oh, wow, that sounds really great. Pity I don’t have my bobble hat and pluggies with me so I can’t go :(_

_Absolutely fuck you, you philistine. I can’t believe I’m friends with you._

James almost hears the tone Ed would be taking with him as he reads the message, and the thrill he gets immediately gives way to something James absolutely does not want to acknowledge as longing, no matter how platonic it is. 

—

James has the best gig of his trip so far that night, so good that it’s maybe even in the top ten performances he’s given in recent memory. Possibly even the top five. He had been feeling a bit slow recently, but he’d been in America for too long to attribute this purely to jet lag, and it’d been bothering him. No such issues with that tonight, though.

After the show, the promoter ends up taking him to a jazz bar, and he has a few drinks. There’s a live band performing, and James takes a picture. He sends it to Ed with a message claiming to thank Ed for the gig recommendation, and feels very smug in anticipation of the annoyed reaction he’s going to get from Ed.

—

There are a number of aspects of touring which James dislikes, but fairly close to the top is having to masturbate in hotel rooms. He barely feels good about it when he’s doing it in the comfort of his own bed, but away from home he feels even seedier, because it’s such an awful, depressing image, and he knows that strangers will have also had orgasms in the same bed. But right now he’s running on the adrenaline from a great show and buzzing from alcohol, so maybe he can push past that tonight. He hopes so; he hasn’t jerked off since he got here, and by this point it’s making him feel antsy. Still, he knows he has to almost trick his body into thinking he’s going to bed with no ulterior motives, so he goes about his normal night routine even to the extent of putting his pyjamas on before he gets into bed.

When he’s under the sheets, James closes his eyes, and tries to settle on a line of thought that will get him into the right headspace. Since he stopped watching porn, he has to rely on just what’s in his head, which ends up being difficult. He can’t think of sex he’s already had with partners; he always feels like he’s violating a boundary by accessing the memories. He can’t think of sex he’d like to have with specific people, because if anything that’s even worse in terms of intrusion. So instead he dwells on isolated sensations and images. His mind flits from recalling the sensation of his mouth on skin, then on to kissing, to the thought of lips on his and to having his hand buried in someone else’s hair.

His hand has managed to make its way to his cock — he has to think of his limbs as operating independently of his thoughts while doing this because to actually remember he’s controlling his movements hinders his ability to perform them — when he hears his phone buzzing with a message. He doesn’t check it, but he knows it’s Ed replying to him.

Suddenly, a very specific memory of eating ice cream when he was with Ed comes to mind. Ed had decided that it looked far too good for him not to try, and he’d made whatever risk/benefit calculations he needed to in order to taste it. Instead of taking the cone when James offered it to him, Ed just leaned straight in to lick it, and when he came away there was still a bit of cream on his lip which his tongue darted out to catch as he looked directly at James, nodding in approval at the ice cream.

Unfortunately for James, the thought didn’t spring to mind earlier on, when he could have ignored it and carried on wanking without any repercussions. It happened to appear when he was far too close to ejaculating for it to just not matter. In fact, it came close enough to him ejaculating that, to an impartial observer (albeit an impartial observer who would have to have had access to James’s internal thought patterns), it could quite easily seem that the thought of Ed licking traces of ice cream from his mouth was the triggering factor in James reaching orgasm.

The worst thing to James’s mind at this particular moment is that it wasn’t even a bad orgasm. It was objectively a very fucking good orgasm. Maybe even in his top five in recent memory. Unfortunately, though, it’s irrevocably associated with the thought of Ed, and the feelings induced by that fact just prove correct James’s reluctance to think about people he knows while he masturbates.

James can’t even bring himself to get up and clean himself up properly. He wipes his hand and dick in the bedsheets and wonders if he can somehow cringe himself into sleeping.

—

The next few days are har— _difficult_. 

James hasn’t got the kind of brain that will let him forget any transgression, no matter how minor in the grand scheme of things, no matter how not really his own fault it was. His brain was too thoroughly pickled in religion during his formative years for that. To make matters worse, he also has the kind of brain which gets very, very focused on pleasure. And that’s okay when it comes to food, most of the time at least. It’s really not okay when the pleasure in question combines with something like sex, something he associates too strongly with guilt, because then what feels like his whole self will be constantly torn between fixating on acquiring more of the pleasure, and trying not to think about whatever he wants ever again.

While James is fairly good at suppressing all these things while he’s awake, it’s an entirely different story while he’s asleep, and it’s even worse when he’s in the hinterland between those two states. Sometimes, the things that seem to be there then have no real obvious reason for them; they’re obtuse and idiosyncratic. Other times, it’s much more evident what’s going on in the hidden regions of his psyche. Then there’s the night where, if it wasn’t logistically impossible for this to be the case, he could have sworn blind someone’s mouth was on his dick, and he just knew that if he opened his eyes and looked down, it’d be Ed giving him a blow job. When he had jolted awake, it was with the feeling he gets whenever he comes very suddenly — like a punch in the gut, only without the pain — and, predictably, his sheets were sticking to him.

It’s honestly enough to make James swear off masturbation forever. Maybe even orgasms full stop. 

—

A few days on from the second very much tainted orgasm, James finds himself having not long arrived in a new city and wandering roads entirely unfamiliar to him looking out for somewhere decent to eat lunch. He settles on a restaurant he only found because he’d taken a wrong turn down a fairly quiet side street, and that he only decided on because the name echoed around in his head pleasingly. It was a casual place, but with table service, and it was only when a member of wait staff had shown him to a table that it sunk in.

This was one of the places Ed recommended to him.

The thought makes his stomach flip, and a jolt of irritation runs through him that even when they were oceans apart, Ed would always just — be _there_ somehow. Normally, he realises, that would soothe him. But not now, not when James hasn’t been able to shake the shame off for days. 

He can’t leave now, though. Not when he’s been seated. While he knows, rationally, that if he was to leave now the waiter wouldn’t be able to tell that the reason for his departure was that he’d very recently started to, albeit entirely unintentionally, climax to the thought of his best friend, it’d feel like he was highlighting it somehow. He also doesn’t want the wait staff thinking it’s their fault he’s left, and he’s been looking for something to eat for long enough, and he’s hungry, tired, and moody. So he’s stuck, and he’ll just have to eat here. But he won’t get dessert, because that’s the grounds Ed recommended it on so he’d obviously have to tell him about it, and in any case he doesn’t feel like he deserves it today. Besides, it all seems to be served with ice cream, which is a sore subject for him currently.

If James still believed in God, maybe he’d think it was a sign that he was going to be tainted with shame forever. Even with his current lack of faith, it’s still a convincing thought. 

—

Apart from James, there’s one other occupied table in the restaurant. It’s taken up by two men about James’s age having a relaxed lunch together. It’s not a massive place, so he can catch drifts of their conversation, see glimpses of their body language towards each other. He can’t really get to grips with what they must be to each other. It’s possible they’re just friends. There’s no reason for them not to just be friends. They’ve not done anything particularly to indicate otherwise. There’s an intimacy there which James can’t quite quantify, and the scene feels so familiar to him, and he can’t quite quantify that either. Then one of the guys says to the other that his side dish is really good, and asks him whether he’d like to try some, and then James gets it. It’s basically just — they’re basically just James and Ed, but obviously not quite, and it’s the memory of all the meals they’ve shared together to which James is responding. 

But it is a bit — it’s romantic, the atmosphere between them, and it throws James off, because… well, what if that’s been there between them when they’ve gone for dinner together too, and James just hasn’t been picking up on that, and — that would be absolutely ridiculous even for him, wouldn’t it? That degree of obliviousness? And would that even be what James wanted? He startles out of the train of thought when his food comes, and notices that the two men are now holding hands over the table. They look so at ease, and James realises that, yes. That is what he wants, actually. Not from just anyone; he wants that from Ed.

That should be a completely earth-shattering realisation, but, for some reason, it brings him more peace than he’s had in the past week.

—

In the end, James decides to order pudding. Not really because he’s come to terms with what’s happened (he still feels strange about it), but because he really wants to text Ed, and needs an excuse. He wants to feel close to him in some small way.

The restaurant specialises in pie, and James orders the blueberry. It arrives piping hot, filling visibly bubbling under the crust and with the ice cream served in a little ramekin on the side. He immediately takes a picture for Ed and sends it, reasoning that it’s going to have to cool down, anyway.

 _Oh, fuck me_ , the message from Ed reads, and James can hear him say it in his head. It makes him feel... odd. Not queasy sick with shame like he has been, just slightly floaty. _Is it as good as it looks?_

 _Yeah_ , James sends in reply, before pausing. He knows Ed will want him to go into more detail, but his enjoyment isn’t just based on how good the pie is (although that definitely is a part of it, the tart filling feeling like it’s bursting on his tongue and the buttery pastry weighing it down as a counterbalance). It’s based on the situation, it’s based on feeling like he’s swimming in the knowledge that Ed cares about him; it’s based on feeling like he’s on solid ground for the first time in days. James doesn’t know how to explain all of that. _It’s really comforting_ , he adds after much deliberation.

—

The rest of the trip passes without much incident. Mainly, by this point, James just really wants to be home, and no amount of extravagant North American desserts could possibly change his mind on that front. He’d be lying if he wasn’t getting anxious about what to do when it comes to Ed, though. He thought he was confused at the beginning of the trip, but he knows he was making a mountain out of a molehill back then now that he’s been confronted with the emotional equivalent of Everest in terms of his own realisations.

It occurs to him that when he was thinking about what his friends would say about the whole situation that, for the most part, he’d really picked the most absolutely useless of his friends to imagine talking with, and maybe that was deliberate. And besides, that was when he was still under the impression his feelings were entirely platonic. He scrolls through the rest of his contacts idly while waiting at the airport, thinking he might ask someone marginally more sensible now so, by the time he arrived, he’d be able to see their advice.

He types out a message to Josh, and waits until the plane is boarding to send it.

—

On reflection, when you’re someone who is already prone to obsessing and catastrophising, just before embarking on a lengthy transatlantic flight is probably the worst time to send an anxiety-inducting text to someone. The worst time to have that realisation, of course, is the moment directly after sending the message. 

James picks the absolute worst looking film available out of the myriad poor choices available on the plane’s entertainment system because he can’t convince himself he deserves anything better than a subpar Adam Sandler vehicle from the mid-noughties. The problem with that, though, is the film fails to engage his attention in any useful way.

The only good thing about this entire situation is that planes don’t have any windows that James could fling his phone and/or himself out of from sheer embarrassment. 

—

When the plane lands, James doesn’t turn his phone on immediately. He’s exhausted from the flight and the worrying and the lack of meaningful sleep over a fairly long period of time, and he knows he just needs to focus on being a functioning human being for long enough to get home.

James goes through the terrifying doors after the baggage carousel and customs, the ones with the signs that declare very clearly that there’s absolutely no going back ever now, with the customary jolt of fear that he’s really fucked up somewhere along the line alongside a new sinking realisation in his chest that yeah, in so many ways he really can’t go back. He doesn’t look at the crowd of people waiting for their passengers, visitors and returning family members. When he was a kid, he always would expect fanfare, massive banners saying ‘welcome home James’, maybe some balloons, even though realistically anyone who would care that he was home would already be with him.

This time, though, he hears someone shout his name. His first thought is that it’s a fan, which has to be one of the more egotistical thoughts he’s had recently (apparently, LA has rubbed off on him the most, and he hates himself for it). But then the sound of the voice resonates in his head, and it’s familiar and warming, and he looks up. For a very long moment, he doesn’t quite register what he seems, but then it clicks.

Ed’s standing at the barrier, grinning and waving at him.

Through the tired fog of his brain, James feels the smile break out on his face, and he points at Ed and tries to arrange his face in the way that will most convey that he’s very confused at Ed’s presence but also overjoyed, and that will also be the way most likely to make Ed laugh.

—

It feels like it takes much longer for James to get to Ed than it actually does. As soon as James reaches him, Ed pulls him in tightly for a hug. James inhales, and Ed smells better than usual, although that could just be mostly because James has been breathing recycled air and the occasional fart from a fellow passenger for the majority of the last twelve hours.

‘Look at you,’ Ed says after releasing him, fond in the way that he always is when he’s trying to hide his concern for James. ‘Mate, you’re _wiped_.’

 _Yeah, and it’s all your fault_ , a voice in James’s brain pipes up, before he remembers that no, actually it’s entirely James’s fault for developing this whole complex thing about Ed. James realises he’s been completely zoned out while this internal dialogue is going on, and looks at Ed sheepishly with a shrug.

‘Come on,’ Ed grabs the handle of James’s suitcase. ‘Let’s get you home.’

—

Once James has settled into the passenger seat of Ed’s car, Ed passes him the auxiliary cable for the car’s stereo system without saying anything.

James was still in the mindset that he wants to ignore the very existence of his phone for a bit longer, but Ed almost never offers anyone the opportunity to play their own music in his car, and once James gets his phone out of his pocket he can’t quite resist switching airplane mode off. He puts on the Spotify playlist of things that Ed might enjoy which he’s been compiling while ignoring the stream of notifications coming through on his phone.

‘You don’t really get this sort of service from an Uber, do you?’ Ed says with a grin, as they leave the airport car park.

‘What if I’d booked a taxi to collect me?’ 

‘You wouldn’t have,’ Ed replies, eyes on the road, and James grumbles exaggeratedly. ‘You never do. You would have meant to book one, then forgotten, then rationalised it by saying that you’d never intended to get one anyway because it’s too expensive. And then you’d have complained about getting your suitcase on the tube.’ James opens his mouth to protest, and then promptly shuts it again, because Ed’s right. James takes a deep breath, gets his phone, and opens WhatsApp to see what Josh said to him.

James was expecting a stream of messages, a fair few fond admonishments, and some reasonable practical advice along the lines of ‘you need to get over this’. But the only message from Josh on his phone is _stop overthinking it. kiss him, or at least tell him. he won’t be a prick about it._ A sudden lump in James’s throat appears.

‘We could grab some takeaway from that new burger place in Brixton, if you want?’ Ed asks, making James startle. James swallows, his throat feeling dry.

‘Yeah. That’d be great,’ he answers, putting his phone back on the dashboard like it’s heated up very suddenly.

-

James doesn’t talk very much for the rest of the journey. His head is whirling, and he closes his eyes and rests against the window. Ed doesn’t interrupt him, except to ask him whether he knows what he wants to eat so he can order it to collect. When they get to Brixton, Ed leaves him in alone in the car while he goes to pick up the food, and James looks at the message Josh sent him again. There’s a part of him that thinks it’s the most absurd suggestion in the world, the idea of him actually making something happen when it comes to romance. He’s never pursued anyone really. Not properly.

But then he realises he made this whole career happen. It wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t driven or determined to make it work. And now he’s here, and none of that was by chance. And... if he’s managed to make that work, doing this would be nothing in comparison. All it would take would be a small gesture. 

It would actually be nothing to kiss Ed, in terms of physicality. There’s not going to be any shortage of opportunity; they don’t keep much distance from each other when they’re together. Somehow the realisation of how easy it would be frightens James, because if it was really that easy, and this was really meant to happen, then surely it would have happened years ago.

When Ed comes back to the car, it makes James jump, and Ed grins at him.

‘They were doing a salted caramel milkshake as a special,’ Ed says, setting the food down between them and starting the car again. ‘I got you one.’

‘I could actually kiss you,’ James says, more absent-mindedly to himself than anything, repeating the realisation he’s just had about Ed. But it works well enough in context as a response, thankfully, and it makes Ed smirk in an incredibly appealing way.

—  
‘You can tell me to piss off whenever you like, by the way,’ Ed says, after they’ve eaten their takeaway while sitting on James’s sofa, during which he’d thoroughly grilled James about every meal he’d eaten which Ed hadn’t had the opportunity to try.

‘No, it’s alright. I missed you,’ James replies, rushing the last few words. He’s used the word ‘miss’ when he really meant ‘love’ too much of the time for it to be an easy thing to say any more. He glances at Ed out of the corner of his eye while he’s busying himself by putting the rubbish from their meal back in the bag, and Ed seems to be, in a barely tangible way, more content than he was before James said that.

When James was starting out doing comedy, he’d never really check the bills of the gigs he was doing. Whenever he would get to the venue and discover that Ed was on the same line up, and especially when he was due to be MCing, he’d always feel that much happier for seeing him. James knows he couldn’t MC as well as Ed; Ed’s capable, very much unflappable, whereas a core chunk of James’s whole thing is flap, or at least the illusion of flap. James has seen Ed defuse countless awkward situations which he instinctively knows he’d make worse given half the chance. It’s only really started occurring to James recently that maybe Ed would have also encountered a similar feeling of ease whenever he encountered James on the circuit. 

Thinking about Ed’s ability to deal with the unexpected makes James feel better about the potentially incredibly awkward situation that he’s about to drop upon him. No matter how unwelcome James kissing him might end up being, at least it’s not quite on a par with a stag do after several rounds of jagerbombs.

‘I’ve thought about this,’ James says, turning to Ed, who immediately raises his eyebrows. It wasn’t really what he’d wanted to say; he knows it sounds like it’s out of nowhere even though it’s not, it’s the culmination of several very tortured thought processes. He’s just so bone-tired that he can’t think about how anything he says comes across, but he knows — or at least, he thinks he does — that he needs to do this right now.

‘You’ve thought about this,’ Ed echoes back, mouth twitching upwards slightly in the way it always does when Ed thinks that James is being preposterous but wants to see where it’s going too much to intervene. The sound of Ed’s voice, though, steadies him enough to actually do the thing he’s been thinking about, and he leans in much more quickly than he was perhaps intending to and kisses Ed firmly on the mouth.

James hasn’t instigated kisses very often in his life. Not first kisses, at any rate. The way he can feel Ed’s soft intake of shocked breath against his mouth in the seconds before he kisses back makes him think that he’s been missing out. He raises his hand to curl around the back of Ed’s head so he can stroke the very short hair there as they kiss, which is perhaps the thing that he’s been dwelling on the most. He expects to be shocked by the feeling, but instead it’s reassuring. He really likes it. And Ed’s a good kisser, which isn’t surprising at all. He’s firm, and steady. James feels himself melt into it, and James really likes that, too. 

‘You’ve been thinking about that,’ Ed says when they break apart, somehow still calm and confident on the surface at least, if slightly breathless. James nods. ‘Was it because of the salted caramel?’

‘No,’ James laughs.

‘Figures. If it was, you would have put out years ago,’ Ed says, gently smirking, and James splutters at the directness of the remark. ’What else have you been thinking about?’

‘Er. Ice cream, mainly,’ James says, and Ed snorts with laughter.

‘Well, that goes without saying. No, I mean… anything else?’

‘I’ll have you know that ice cream is extremely sexual, actually,’ James says haughtily, and immediately blushes after he realises what he’s said. He didn’t mean to use that particular word. His head is feeling fuzzy from exhaustion and the kiss. Ed’s laughing in the way he does when James has said or done something he can’t quite believe, his eyebrows raised. It’s broken the tension at least, and Ed is looking at James slightly less intensely. It gives James the space to be honest. ‘No, I haven’t much thought beyond doing — that, if I’m honest. That was terrifying enough.’ Ed puts his hand on James’s thigh, but James knows it’s not in the kind of way that’s trying to start anything; it’s just the sort of tactile gesture Ed makes whenever James needs to be calmed.

‘It’s okay,’ Ed replies with a smile. ‘We can think about it together.’

James shyly grins back at him, and Ed leans in to kiss him this time, bringing his hand up to James’s jaw, thumb pressed firmly against his cheekbone. James sighs into the kiss, feeling the tension in his muscles ease, and the agitation in his head finally subside.

**Author's Note:**

> Come and hang out with me on twitter (@suricattakat), or I'm also on Dreamwidth as suricatta!


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